Albania featured in “Imaging the Balkans” travelling exhibition

TIRANA, March 3 – A picture featuring Albanian independence leader Ismail Qemali and several delegates on a boat leaving Albania to participate in the London Conference in 1913 following the first Balkan War is being displayed in a travelling exhibition on the constitution and evolution of modern nations in South-east Europe.
The black and white picture by Kel Marubi, a member of the famous Marubi dynasty, features the departure of the Albanian delegation, headed by Ismail Qemali, Prime Minister of the interim government of Albania, for the Conference of Ambassadors in London, 1913 which decided on Albania’s partition leaving considerable territories out of the Albanian borders.
The picture titled “Ismail Qemali and Albanian personalities in a boat” is part of the 19th and 20th century Marubi photo collection based in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra.
The travelling exhibit “Imagining the Balkans. Identities and Memory in the long 19th century” is currently featuring in Bucharest after previous displays in Ljubjana and Belgrade in 2013.
The exhibit will be on display at the National History Museum of Romania until 27 April 2014 and travel to other countries from South-East Europe in 2014-2015.
National history museums from South East Europe and beyond – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – have come together to put in perspective and compare their collections and their national histories, says the UNESCO Venice Office.
“Within the region, neighbours have often been described in terms of dichotomies, and past or ongoing disputes. This exhibition is structured around a different principle. The complexities of historical change in South-East Europe during the “long 19th century” are explained through
a presentation of shared key processes and experiences, common features and historical interactions, including with the rest of Europe, rather than on the lines of exclusive and contrasting parallel national histories and narratives,” curators say.
Named after Mario Todorova’s book, “Imagining the Balkans” the exhibition seeks to review the vision of social, political, economic and cultural changes in South-east Europe. For the first time, history museums from all over the region and beyond have overcome their borders, have worked together and combined their collections in order to show that each unique national destiny is inextricably linked and interrelated with a common regional and broader universal, destiny.
This exhibition is a collective project of national history museums under the coordination of UNESCO seeking to foster intercultural dialogue and reflection upon shared identities and memories.